Skepticism

EVENTS

TWO Pointless Petitions!

The haters created a petition to remove Rebecca Watson from Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe. It’s ridiculous; Steve Novella isn’t going to pay any attention to a clearly biased sample, especially since the response is pathetic. 70 people have signed on, including Hoggle and his tiny crew of cretins. And if you read the comments, you’ll notice that it looks like about half of them are yanking the creators’ chain.

Watson is dogmatically dedicated to unproven ideas like “rape is bad” and “blacks should be allowed to vote”. That’s not what skepticism is about! Skepticism is about making me feel super smrt for not believing in Bigfoot! How can I feel smrt around a girl?!?! Her withering glare makes my penis feel even smaller than its two inches.

In contrast, another petition to keep Rebecca Watson on the show has been made. It’s just as pointless — Novella isn’t going to pay any attention to it, either — but notice the numbers: it already has 306 signatures.

I’m to new to this place so haven’t heard much about this Rebecca Watson. The only thing I know was that some guy in an elevator invited her to a cup of coffee in the middle of the night. She declined and she asked all men on youtube not to do that. I’ll respect her wishes and not ask her out if I ever meet her, but aside from that I don’t understand what the fuzz is about.

On the off-chance that you’re not hoggling, the answer is quite simple. Ms. Watson’s statement, “guys, don’t do that”, unleashed over a year of rape and death threats towards her and anyone, particularly women, who support her.

Ok I saw the original video just now. Seems to me she expresses the opinion that men be should be tactful not only concerning how but where and when they ask a woman out. Sounds perfectly reasonable to me. And this causes a year of persecution? That’s sad.

Thanks for the retweet PZ! As far as pointless polls go – yes, this is completely unscientific, but that’s not the point. The anti-RW petition was set up to enable continued bullying of Rebecca; the pro-RW is there to support her and to say you don’t stand with the bullies.

@Stoferb, you might find you get ppl being all rude if you are not au fait with every little detail of the internecine war. The slimepitters (Other side) are just the same as they expected me to read their phawrongula wiki (Don’t ask) before I could argue with them on a level basis!

Reading the comments on the anti-one has added some much needed hearty laughter to my day. A tip of the hat and tap of the cane to Mr. Strongballs:

As a man with testicles and a penis I’ve always been a firm believer in the doctrines laid out by the United States congress of 1806’s bill “HR 58008 or the Establishmente of The Rights and Privileges of The Fairer Sexe And Also Horses” which permitted women to eat the meals they are contracted by marriage to cook in the presence of others so long as they do not speak or otherwise express discontent with the sexual advances of their husbands, owners or passersby.

After discovering that this woman, Rebecca Watson, was not only permitted to speak freely in the company of other men, but also to have and express opinions of her own elaboration and not those penned or pre-screened by one of her husbands, I was outraged.

And so I dutifully and emphatically sign this petition and hail its author as a paragon of modern virtue and leader of the cause against the violation of the subjugation of our women. Should I ever meet him in a building’s rising platform, it would be my honour to compliment him on his fine attire and invite him to a game of find-the-snake.

Part of the A+ stuff is to set up an educational forum, where you can ask questions/see if your questions have already been answered. It’s still very basic at the moment, but it’s probably a good place to ask basic questions. Link: http://atheismplus.com/forums/index.php

We get a lot of trolls who try to rehash the same points over and over again as a way to annoy/waste time, so any genuine newbies who come along can get caught in the crossfire. Hopefully being able to direct people to the new site will be a good way to avoid this!

Heh, I loved the fact that Rebecca Watson signed the anti petition: “I must be stopped! Down with authorarians!”

I was thinking of creating a Kickstarter project to help “John Smith”, the petition’s author, buy a clue.

Then I figured I should put the money towards something more useful. Something like creating sneakers for goldfish, or recreating Monty Python’s Argument Clinic sketch with Clint Eastwood and an Ikea showroom.

Her withering glare makes my penis feel even smaller than its two inches.

What does penis size have to do with being a jerk?

Am I being too sensitive here when I don’t like these types of comments at all? It’s not making the people who signed these petitions look worse, it’s making people who might well be suffering with some body shame feel more insecure and shitty.

I can see the petitions being useful (maybe). There have been arguments going back and forth between atheism+/FTB and opponents about which faction represents the majority of skeptics. It wouldn’t settle it definitively but it has the potential to give some idea about which group is actually larger. I’ve been curious myself.

As someone who has followed the podcast that she appears on, the SGU, my understanding is that she has committed hundreds of counts of expressing opinions while woman, being sarcastic while woman and not shutting up after receiving hate mail while woman.

The thing I don’t understand is why they keep listening to the SGU. There’s no shortage of podcasts about STEM and skepticism. If those aren’t good enough you can always start your own podcast. Why torture yourself with the SGU?

@Brownian. Apology accepted. Having been on an exmormon forum for years I think I know what you mean.

Yeah. You’ll start to see it here, too: a certain pattern emerges for various topics. Global warming? Some skeptics show up asking if the sun might not be in a warm bit — “just asking questions!” Thunderf00t? A bunch of folks show up telling us how TF was wronged, and he shouldn’t be censored like that “just because he wasn’t part of the groupthink!”

Rebecca Watson? “Who is she? And why did she try to claim elevator guy tried to rape her?”

Brownian: we’re still sort of working out exactly how this process ought to work, but I’ll relay to trinioler that you acknowledged. Right now the only ways to reply would be email to one of us, or to be signed up on a-plus-scribe.com or on the A+ forums (where there is a brand new transcription section, yay!) But the important part is that participants *know* there’s a specific transcript in progress so they have opportunity to make their wishes known about corrections and such.

Funny you should mention global warming, it always stirs up huge controversy on the exmo billboard. But the deniers there are not at all civil or subtle, politely ‘asking questions’. Instead they are a vocal minority claiming that global warming is a socialist conspiracy or some other nonsense.

But we do have our fair share of mormons or evangelicals trying to pass as exmormons, or trying to convert us. And their tactics get old really fast.

Change.org petitions are evil. It’s the newest way for internet warriors to feel like they are super-engaged activists for a worthy cause.

Really? That seems to be going a bit far. They may not be the most effective and powerful actions that can be done but they do raise awareness and give some albeit unscientific indication of levels of support / opposition to various things.

The petitions are like prayer in that they make people feel like they are doing more than they are for the cause. The targets of the petitions (including Target) don’t change because of the number of signers; they change–and here is where they are different from prayers–because the national news media report on the number of signers. Signing isn’t doing a lot for the cause, but it’s doing more than praying about it.

I’m tremendously amused that the starter of this petition had to create a one-off account with change.org and used the name John Smith. That Watson must be really, really scary.

Or… wait, maybe she started it! As part of a diabolical plan to make people who don’t like her look stupid*, which will further divide the movement and drift the mission. Just one more way in which the dreaded Watson is bringing on the Rebeccapocalpyse!!!

I’m convinced. That’s the only plausible explanation. That Watson is crafty, you know.

* Seriously, though, they need help with this. The material is getting stale.

I found the comments on the anti-Rebecca petition almost as funny as customer reports for BIC for Her.It’s funny how we’re awlways accused of trying to boycott and ruin people’s lives (you know, when Rebecca said she wouldn’t buy anything from Dawkins anymore she condemmed the poor guy to go to the welfare office) and now we have two actual attempts to ruin people plus the hate fung at Amy.

You know, maybe the anti-feminist forces in the skeptical world aren’t as big as they are loud? Hopefully?

You know, it’s interesting when you think about it. There was a time when I might have reacted similarly; I can’t say for sure, but I was definitely one of the “if we aren’t supposed to do that, how are we supposed to do anything?” crowd. But the sheer vehemence against Watson in particular is still baffling. It only makes sense if you assume the slimepitters are mentally ill or just whiny children at heart. (If Victor Ivanoff is any indication, and I say this as someone with a raft of my own mental and social issues to deal with, it’s probably both.)

But I think this is all part of a larger cultural context which includes the ugliest parts of current politics. The US Republican party and its likeminded troglodytes across the globe are promoting open racist and sexist behavior and it’s empowering the assholes within the movement to go along with it, and this especially includes all the bitter NiceGuys(tm) who could never get laid in high school and couldn’t relate to women as equals. I still have a lot of that baggage, I’m not gonna lie. But at least I know it’s there; we have these people calling themselves skeptics who aren’t willing to acknowledge what’s in their own heads. (I would not be surprised to find a lot of them are disproportionately Libertarian, but I’m kind of preaching to the choir on that call.)

BTW, given the comments here, by now I think it’s totally possible that some sensible person who is new to this whole thing and stumbles into this battlefield via the wrong gates is just seriously mistaken.
I would understand why somebody would think that we’re completely off the rails if they only heard the “a guy asked RW for coffee (omitting the time, location, general context) and she called him a rapist (a lie, of course)” spin.
I just don’t see any way to tell them from from the misogynists at the first sight.

If these people WERE regular listeners of the podcast they would know that Steve has had the immense pleasure of sampling their unwarranted bile and hate mail towards Rebecca and isn’t going to give them one inch of satisfaction.

Brian X, I’d be very careful about calling people mentally ill. That said, a minority (and I mean a minority) of the haters exhibit behaviour that isn’t just childish and nasty, but verges into incoherence.

I’m totally with you. It inevitably follows that when someone is being a misogynist creep, someone comes out with the ‘penis size’ comment. Same as with comments about guns and trucks and motorcycles and whatnot.

So I say, to Pharyngula regulars here, since we’re the main proportion of comments:

Let’s not use penis size as a criticism, ever. It puts a measure on masculinity, and comes across as somewhat transphobic and cis-normative (“If your penis isn’t this big, you’re not a man.”)

Greetings PZ and the rest of the FTB community. I am the creator of the petition that seems to have gotten your attention. I must inform you that you have unwittingly taken the bait.

The petition was started for one simple reason: would the celebrities (for lack of a better term) pay attention to a ridiculous 100 signature petition from a nobody? Are the celebrities so hell bent on responding to any detractors, that they would make a mountain out of this mole hill?

To my surprise: you did. I genuinely expected it to be laughed off and ignored.

I guess I always wanted to think that the skeptic community was more important than to engage in rabble rousing. I was wrong. The recent drama has taught me that the rationalist community is just as irrational as everyone else and no amount of navel gazing will change it.

Good luck to all, and I hope skepticism can one day be something worth participating in again.

Well, it was definitely laughed at. As to ignoring it, why? A lot of people had a whole lot of fun! If nothing else, there were pictures of cats not looked at while people laughed their asses off, which can only improve the general tenor of the internet experience.

Greetings PZ and the rest of the FTB community. I am the creator of the petition that seems to have gotten your attention. I must inform you that you have unwittingly taken the bait.

The petition was started for one simple reason: would the celebrities (for lack of a better term) pay attention to a ridiculous 100 signature petition from a nobody? Are the celebrities so hell bent on responding to any detractors, that they would make a mountain out of this mole hill?

To my surprise: you did. I genuinely expected it to be laughed off and ignored.

I guess I always wanted to think that the skeptic community was more important than to engage in rabble rousing. I was wrong. The recent drama has taught me that the rationalist community is just as irrational as everyone else and no amount of navel gazing will change it.

Good luck to all, and I hope skepticism can one day be something worth participating in again.

I’m glad you had fun. I’m not sure I had fun. At first it was kind of funny seeing that a nobody could get the attention of people I view as figureheads in a movement. But then troll’s remorse began to sink in once I realized that people actually took it seriously.

I think both sides are so galvanized and looking for a fight, they will find fights everywhere. I did my silly little experiment, saw the results and that’s enough for me.

I think both sides are so galvanized and looking for a fight, they will find fights everywhere. I did my silly little experiment, saw the results and that’s enough for me.

Great, an idiot makes a stupid petition as a joke; sees some MRAs who took it seriously and sees others who are more sensible react to yet more hateful stupidity and concludes that boths sides are equally wrong.

Also: Fuck you. You used a PERSON for your own gaines. You used a PERSON to prove some stupid point. You do realize that Rebecca is a human being, right? You are a bully. Perhaps people “fell for it” because they recognized that it was bullying and therefore felt sympathy.

You used a person to prove some stupid point that in the end you didn’t even prove. And I imagine you call yourself a Skeptic! Please explain to me how this stupid soshul expiriment was in any way scientific or meaningful. It is not. All it proves is that people felt sympathy toward a fellow humsn they saw being ATTACKED and that you are an awful person for using A PERSON to “prove” some stupid point.

You should be ashamed of yourself. You are a bully and a shitty skeptic.

Gosh, the only possible reason that I might not like Rebecca Watson is because she is a woman, and I’m threatened by women–especially smart, strong ones! It couldn’t be because I find her to be an annoying, pretentious, hypocritical exhibitionist!

Gosh! It is perfectly ok to dislike someone! But if you ate going to list a laundry list of reasons, you should back that shit up. Also, anyone who takes the time to create or sign such an awful, bullying petition clearly has PERSONAL issues against Rebecca. It is creepy.

The lack of self-awareness in your comment is truly awe-inspiring. Since Rebecca Watson is not a pretentious hypocritical exhibitionist (whether she’s annoying is of course completely subjective), it’s abundantly clear that you “find her” to be such because you are threatened by smart, strong women.

Since Rebecca Watson posed for erotic pictures she’s a whore. A whore is property and is fit for public consumption. Whores are in a perpetual state of consent. They may not draw boundaries about when and where they are used or commented upon./q>

When you make yourself look like an idiot you are not superior when people think you’re an idiot. John is the idiot who pisses his pants and then acts smug because he fooled people into thinking he’s a pants pisser

Whether or not I think that she “deserved” verbal abuse and threats has nothing to do with my opinion of her, Janine. But I’ll say that she doesn’t deserve to be threatened anymore than any other public figure, like, say, Richard Dawkins, who’s death threats Rebecca manages to find hilarity in (see AronRa’s “Communicating Atheism pt 1 Skepchick” around the 11min. mark. that’s called “backin’ shit up, marilove!)

John Smith, what a toad you are. You took aim with a mean-spirited swipe at an actual human being, one who has come in for a raft of abuse over the past year, then claim it’s all one big joke and caper about in your clown shoes, making ‘honk honk’ noises.

It’s not a fucking joke, son. Not when the wounds feel so raw and you decide to chuck salt about.

Christ on a bike! I really hope that no-one ever does this to you in real life.

If there’s any good that comes out of this it is to demonstrate how many people have Rebecca’s back. Last I saw there were plenty of names in the pro- petition and plenty of wreckers trolling the anti- petition.

Gosh, the only possible reason that I might not like Rebecca Watson is because she is a woman, and I’m threatened by women–especially smart, strong ones! It couldn’t be because I find her to be an annoying, pretentious, hypocritical exhibitionist!

Yeah, you don’t hate her because is “smart”, you hate her because she is “pretentious”. You don’t hate her for being “strong”, you hate her because you find her “annoying”. You don’t hate her because you are threatened by women, you hate her because she is an “exhibitionist”.

So, what do you want from us? For us to put a more positive spin on your thinly-veiled anti-intellectualism and sexism? For us to ignore that this has anything to do with teeth-gnashing over feminism?

Gosh, the only possible reason that I might not like Rebecca Watson is because she is a woman, and I’m threatened by women–especially smart, strong ones! It couldn’t be because I find her to be an annoying, pretentious, hypocritical exhibitionist!

Why annoying? Because the instinctive emotional reaction to feeling threatened by someone else being vocal and strong is, most of the time, to find that person annoying.

Why pretentious? Because when one encounters someone whom one senses is more intelligent that oneself, but is too proud to admit it, the default expression of that emotion is almost always to find that person pretentious.

Why hypocritical exhibitionist? Because to the misogynist mind, all women can only be dually categorized into the madonna-slut matrix. Either she is the pure mind untouchable madonna to be revered on her pedestal (and never allowed to step off it) or she is the solely body object of lust to be possessed and controlled. If she demonstrates any sort of sexuality at all (ie, if she is a regular, normal woman), then she is automatically a hypocrite if she wants to have her ideas and thoughts taken even slightly seriously. No in-betweens.

Interesting, anteprepro, I never said “hate”. Maybe you’re imagining things?

Awww. I’m sorry. It was “don’t like”. I’m sorry I didn’t parrot exactly what you said. That was completely unfair of me. So, since we are supposed to be using the exact terms that someone else used or else we are “imagining things”, apparently, I would be fascinated to hear the explanation for your #97.

86: “It couldn’t be because I find her to be an annoying, pretentious, hypocritical exhibitionist! ”

Memory holes need to be deeper than 20 comments in order to work properly, FYI.

(And speaking of the depth of holes: It will be entertaining to see you defend the use of “exhibitionist” as figurative and not referring to anything sexual. Count on a misogynist to use sexual language when talking about women, even if what they are talking about has nothing to do with sex!)

Only misogynists call vocal women expressing normal female sexuality “hypocritical exhibitionists”. This is the standard strategy of “sluttificiation” of strong, independent women that misogynists throughout history have used to discredit and silence them.

It is what the bible did to Eve, and Jezebel. It is what Octavian did to Cleopatra. It is what all kinds of political foes tried to do to Catherine the Great. It was what men opposed to Marie Curie’s membership in the then male-only Academie tried to do to her.

So, when someone reaches straight to the bottom of the barrel and grabs the absolutely OLDEST, TRITEST of all misogynistic slur strategies to attack a strong, vocal woman, he is either

A) misogynist and proud of it or

B) ignorant of the misogynistic implications of his words and CAN’T SEE HIS PRIVILEGE in that ignorance.

(And speaking of the depth of holes: It will be entertaining to see you defend the use of “exhibitionist” as figurative and not referring to anything sexual. Count on a misogynist to use sexual language when talking about women, even if what they are talking about has nothing to do with sex!)

So, in addition to saying that exhibitionist isn’t sexual, at all ( at all ), you also say:

I used that word because “attention whore” sounded tasteless. Get your mind out of the gutter, perv!

And checkmate. I thought it was against the rules for someone to move into check, let alone checkmate. But you’re just that incompetent.

So, gschulz, you must have a problem with all bloggers/vloggers, in fact, anybody who has ‘a tendency to display one’s abilities or to behave in such a way as to attract attention’. Why focus on R. Watson?

Whether or not I think that she “deserved” verbal abuse and threats has nothing to do with my opinion of her, Janine. But I’ll say that she doesn’t deserve to be threatened anymore than any other public figure, like, say, Richard Dawkins, who’s death threats Rebecca manages to find hilarity in (see AronRa’s “Communicating Atheism pt 1 Skepchick” around the 11min. mark. that’s called “backin’ shit up, marilove!)

Richard Dawkins clearly meant for those threats to be laughed at. There are people in the background in the room with him in the video of him reading the hate mail (link, the laughter starts around 30 seconds in). I think you’ll agree that if someone invites you to laugh at death threats directed at that person, it’s okay to laugh.

Is that your biggest complaint with Rebecca Watson or did you pick one at random?

Well, it is kind of a “takes one to know one” perspective in my case. And no, they probably aren’t all mentally ill, or even most of them, but the Internet does have a way of creating echo chambers that reinforce screwed-up thinking. (I mean, there’s entire Morgellons communities out there, people who don’t want to be told that the problem is in their heads, not their skins.)

anteprepro, look up the word “exhibitionist”, Clueless. I used that word because “attention whore” sounded tasteless.

In other words, the misogynist troll WANTED to use “attention whore” but deliberately chose another phrase so it could have dictionary-style weasel room (the post pathetic kind) when it gets called out on it.

This is becoming a fascinating glimpse into the sexually repressed workings of the Hive Mind.

Another modern variant of “slut-shaming”, when the more direct version becomes too blatant and obvious. But it works just the same – trying to discredit, distract, and silence vocal women and those who support them by casting aspersions at their sexuality, as if it was even relevant.

This is becoming a fascinating glimpse into the sexually repressed workings of the Hive Mind.

I consider myself a part of this Hive Mind…I had no idea I was sexually repressed though. I was just looking at some friend’s pictures from the Montreal Fetish Weekend, wishing I had been able to go like I did last year. But I am sexually repressed now, so I guess I should be happy I did not go, I would not have fit in.

The funny thing is, the most sexually repressed people I have come across are the bros out there, and the MRA-types. They often talk about how sexually repressed feminists are but in my experience many of them seem to think sex begins and ends at being able to pick someone up and have sex with them. There is no variety and no real openness about sexual issue with them. Women that are open about their sexuality are still sluts and whores. If I was looking to find an interesting discussion of sexuality I would look for a feminist writer like Greta, not some MRA dudebro.

Thank you, it’s so weird. On line petitions seem very peculiar. I supposed I could put one up saying “I hate Hitler” or one saying “Chocolate is good”. There is no point to many of them, unless signing one give you some sort of happy feeling of having DONE something. Crashing them seems a waste of internet time, there has to be a cat video out there I haven’t seen yet. I think it might be fun to post a petition against petitions about Rebecca Watson.

As you should. Hypocrisy is one of those complaints where the complainer really needs to show their work. It is a complaint that often has little substance to it, and even if it does on occasion, the appropriate response is often “who gives a fuck?”. A lot of people are hypocritical about shit that doesn’t matter. They don’t practice what they preach, but aren’t really all that preachy, or are preaching harmless or actually helpful shit to begin with. The only time that hypocrisy actually matters is to stress that people peddling awful bullshit can’t even stomach their own medicine. Even then, it is really just gravy: The important point should be the harmfulness/stupidity of the stuff peddled, not the hypocrisy of the peddler. The charge of hypocrisy, on its lonesome, is just about shaming the person guilty of it. Basically, ad hominem all the way down.

Now, the other day I did call someone out for strawmanning. I’m not therefore a hypocrite, however, because I backed it up and explained what the strawman was, and because I’m not saying no one must ever use either, only that it contributes less than nothing if it’s not backed up.